Bill made no move. He offered no greeting. He understood. It was the thing he had looked for and prepared for. It was Usak. And he watched the Indian as he laid his long rifle across his knees, and held out his hands to the crackling blaze.
The Indian seemed in no way concerned with the coolness of his reception. It was almost as if his actions were an expression of the thing he considered his simple right. And having taken up his position he returned the silent scrutiny of his host with eyes so narrowed that they revealed nothing but the fierce gleam of the firelight they reflected.
He leant forward and deliberately spat into the fire. Then the sound of his voice came, and his eyes widened till their coal black depths revealed something of the savage mood that lay behind them.
“I see him, all thing this night,” he said. “So I come. I, Usak, say him this thing. I tell ’em all peoples white-mans no good. Whitemans steal ’em all thing. White-mans him look, look all time. Him look on the face of white girl. Him talk plenty much. Him show her much thing. Gold? Yes. Him buy her, this whiteman. Him buy her with gold which he steal from her land.”
He raised one lean brown hand and thrust up three fingers.
“I tak him this gun,” he went on fiercely. “Him ready to my eye. One—two—three time I so stand. You dead all time so I mak him. Now I say you go. One day. You not go? Then I mak ’em so kill quick.”
Wilder moved. But it was only to withdraw his hand from the pocket of his pea-jacket. He was grasping an automatic pistol of heavy calibre. He drew up a knee in his lolling position, and rested hand and weapon upon it. The muzzle was deliberately covering the broad bosom of the man beyond the fire, and his finger was ready to compress on the instant.
“That’s all right, Usak,” he said calmly. “What are we going to do? Talk or—shoot?” His eyes smiled in the calm fashion out of which he was rarely disturbed. “I’m no Euralian man to leave you with the drop on me.”
The final thrust was not without effect. For an instant the Indian’s eyes widened further. Then they narrowed suddenly to the cat-like watchfulness his manner so much resembled.
“We talk,” he said, after a brief conflict with his angry mood, his gaze on the ready automatic whose presence and whose offence he fully appreciated.